They say timing is everything. I am still alive because of timing. I am a better person today than I was yesterday because of timing. God’s timing is perfect, we never have to doubt it or be afraid of it. Two weeks ago He saved my life.
It all started a few months ago when I told the nurse at the allergy clinic I hadn’t been able to smell anything, or breathe through my nose, for months. I saw my ENT doctor and he immediately said “your tonsils are huge and infected, they need to come out”. I was originally scheduled for one surgery date but due to insurance issues it was pushed back another two weeks. By the time my surgery date arrived I was beyond ready to get this over with so I could finally breathe and sleep well. On Friday, September 11th, I had my tonsils removed and also the turbinates in my nose. I was anticipating a rough recovery, tonsil surgery is particularly difficult for adults. I was prepared for all the pain and discomfort, and had taken two weeks off work per my doctor’s advice.
According to the doctor my surgery went well, and I was home the same day with plenty of prescription pain meds and my mom here to take care of me. By all accounts I was supposed to “feel pretty good” the first two days after surgery and then start feeling worse. The first two days I felt awful so I was scared to think how much worse it could get. I was on a diet of baby food and Cream of Wheat with a steady schedule of medication every few hours. I had my follow up doctor appointment on Day 3 and he said I was particularly alert and doing well compared to most patients. Even though I was miserable, had no appetite and was in a lot of pain, I was feeling very optimistic!
Day 4 I started having shortness of breath and incredible heart palpitations if I walked even a few feet. I had asked to have the pain meds changed because they were causing an allergic reaction, I was constantly sweaty and itchy all over. I thought the palpitations were a result of the change in meds so I thought I’d give it some time and hopefully it would go away. I was feeling sicker and more pain than the first three days but I figured that was to be expected. I didn’t tell anyone but when I went to bed that night, as I kneeled in prayer I asked God to spare my life because I felt a strange premonition I could stop breathing and die in my sleep.
Day 5 was the first day I had been without my mom, she had a short trip to Idaho planned with a friend and I had insisted that she go even though she was worried about leaving me. My daughter was at school and I was expecting a furniture delivery so I parked myself in the recliner in my front room to wait for the delivery truck. I sat there for five hours with absolutely no concept of where I was or what time it was. I didn’t eat, drink, use the bathroom, didn’t move. When the doorbell rang I could barely walk the five feet to the door. I think I startled the delivery man because I was extremely pale and probably looked like death warmed over and could barely walk. I told him I was recovering from tonsil surgery and went back to my chair. After they left I couldn’t even enjoy my new special order sectional couch (I picked the fabrics myself!) I was just feeling too delirious so I decided to go lay in my bed. After my daughter came home from school and was doing honework the impression came in my mind to have my daughter call my sister and tell her all the meds I had been taking and when. I thought I might have overdosed even though I was keeping careful notes. My sister tried to talk to me but I couldn’t answer simple questions and we tried texting but I was writing gibberish. I told her I just wanted to sleep it off. She called my daughter and asked her to go do her homework in my bed and then she called my mom and told her to hurry up and get home. I felt I was going to die but my brain really wasn’t functioning correctly so I couldn’t process my thoughts. I just wanted to go to sleep, but I’m fairly certain if I had I wouldn’t be alive right now.
My mom got home and we headed to Urgent Care. It was now 6pm and I had been pretty much delirious all day. I could barely walk into the clinic, the receptionist told me there was an hour and a half wait and she looked at my face and decided to go get the nurse. The nurse came out and took one look at me and said I needed to go straight to the Emergency Room. I didn’t realize it but my face was white as a sheet and my lips were purple. When we got to the ER I could barely walk, I almost passed out at the intake desk. I told them I thought I was having a drug reaction following surgery. When the nurse took me to get vitals they said the oxygen wasn’t reading correctly because of my acrylic nails. My mom said “no that’s not it, she had surgery last week and they got her oxygen just fine with her nails”. They didn’t think the reading could be right…my oxygen saturation was 58…I shouldn’t have even been able to walk at that level. (A quick explanation of oxygen saturation: above 90 is normal, anything below 75 is considered dangerous and fatal if persistent. Organs begin to shut down below 70, below 60 you are typically unconscious/semi-concious and in the beginning stages of paralysis, below 50 you are nearing death.)
After several attempts to get an accurate reading, my mom heard one of the nurses say “let’s try putting her on oxygen” and as soon as they did that my levels started to increase and they realized the reading hadn’t been a mistake. They wheeled me back to the emergency ward. My veins had collapsed so it took three nurses and the phlebotomist quite awhile to get an IV started. I have bruises all over my arms from being poked dozens of times with needles during my hospitalization. The doctor suspected I had a blood clot so I had several heart tests run which came back normal. I had to give them a urine sample when I first got there so they unhooked me from oxygen and a nurse followed me into the restroom. My kidneys had started to shut down and I was severely dehydrated so it took me close to ten minutes to give them anything. By the time I got back to my bed and back on the monitors, my oxygen was in the 40s. I heard one nurse scold the other for taking me off oxygen. I don’t recall exactly when they finally told me I had pneumonia. Not just any case of pneumonia, but in both lungs and it had spread through my blood (septic).
I spent the next two days on the Intermediate Care ward. The first night I was there I was so sweaty I had the nurse turn the thermostat down to 69 degrees and I slept all night with just a sheet on me. I was hooked up to so many wires that I couldn’t really move but that was the first night I had slept more than an hour or two straight in a week. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and not knowing where I was for a minute, I felt like I had been living a bad dream. I distinctly felt someone squeezing my big toe but there was nobody there, and then my eyes immediately locked on the number 98 out of all the vitals on the monitor, which is the year both my paternal grandparents died. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign or not but I really felt someone had been there. I laid there for a few minutes trying to get my bearings and suddenly God was talking to me. I don’t know how it is when God talks to you, if you actually hear His voice, but for me its just a stream of thoughts that I know came from outside my mind like someone else talking to me. He told me He had saved me because I had more to do with my life, that there were more purposes He had for me that I didn’t know about yet. He also said that I needed to love Him only, and that when I could do that and not care about being single anymore, that’s when He would send me the man He’s been preparing for me.
I learned a few lessons in the hospital. First, how to be completely at the mercy of someone else’s care for simple things like a cup of water or a blanket or to reach something out of reach. Before I could be discharged I had to have the awesome male nurse that had been taking care of me give me a suppository. Talk about humbling! I definitely learned humility during my stay, and I know God knew I needed that. I went from being a person who couldn’t go to the grocery store without makeup and hair done, to looking like death warmed over for days and having a nice guy I hardly knew seeing more of me than I cared to expose. During my stay, I spent a lot less time worrying about trivial things like Facebook or what was going on in the outside world. I maintained contact with a few friends which was really vital to me to make me feel like I wasn’t in a parallel universe. I reached out on Facebook a couple of times to ask for prayers and I knew that a lot of people were praying for me which brought me peace. The greatest peace of all came from knowing that no matter what happened, God had my life in His hands and He never makes a mistake. If it was my time to go, that was His call. I wasn’t scared.
A huge blessing and comfort through this whole ordeal was my mom’s constant care. God’s timing was at work here as well…the relationship between her and I had been strained for over thirteen years and my heart had become somewhat indifferent toward it. But God in His wisdom softened my heart and got me to start praying for healing a little while before all of this happened. About a week or so before surgery my mom and I had a breakthrough and I was finally able to let go of my anger and forgive. God knew that I was going to need her more than I ever have as an adult. She was the best nurse I could’ve asked for. We spent quite a bit of time together which would’ve been much more difficult if I had my surgery when it was originally scheduled and we hadn’t made peace yet. Again, God’s timing was perfect.
Lamentations 3:25-26 reads, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” In our human weakness, waiting is one of the hardest things to do. How difficult is it to wait for a big refund check after you file your taxes? Or to wait for that promotion you’ve been working towards? Even when we’re waiting for something bad to happen, we hate the wait. Think about how agonizing it is to wait for death when the doctor has given someone a certain amount of time to live. With our limited view of what’s ahead, waiting can seem like torture. The thing we’re waiting for often consumes our thoughts and sometimes even our actions. Isn’t it true of pretty much anything in life, we’re constantly waiting for this thing or that thing to happen? When we completely surrender to God’s timing, and trust in His plans for us, waiting is no longer difficult. In fact, over time you come to see how much you missed out on while you were preoccupied with waiting. I can say I’ve been able to surrender a lot of the time, but I’m still working on doing it ALL the time. However, when I have submitted, any anxiety I feel regarding the future is totally gone and I am at peace knowing God is working things out on my behalf. Honestly, it should be easy for us to realize this all the time, but we humans like to perceive we have some control over our lives and surrendering to a higher power sounds like totally giving up control, which is scary. The opposite is true though, it is so much less scary than you think once you try it.
Today is Day 17 after surgery, I received the approval from my doctor today to return to work tomorrow. The x-rays and blood work show no more pneumonia in my blood or my lungs. I came home from the hospital with orders to be on oxygen for a month, and I was on it 24/7 until a couple of days ago. I am positive that the prayers that were said on my behalf, and the goodness and mercy of God, is what has sped my recovery along so quickly. I have thanked God every single night for sparing me, and for all the wonderful family and friends who were there for me and who prayed for me. He told me He was resetting my life, and I am going to make the best of the gift God has given me. Part of that is to continue telling as many people as I can how much He loves them. He loves us individually more than we can imagine. I am falling in love with Him more every single day. God is good, all the time, and His timing is perfect ALL THE TIME.
God Is Within Reach 